#arthurcclarke — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #arthurcclarke, aggregated by home.social.
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AAny sufficiently advanced [biomimicry] is indistinguishable from [AI] [to the marketing team]"
What #ArthurCClarke really meant.
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It pisses me off that Elon Shitstain used Arthur C. Clarke speaking about the communications satellite, which he proposed in his writings, for a Starlink ad.
#superbowl #Spacex #shit #ArthurCClarke #superbowlads #TV #superbowl60
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What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XXIV
- A selection of read volumes from my shelves
What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read next month? Here’s the June installment of this column.
I adore teaching American History for college credit. Every summer I ponder what to change and improve. And this year, I want to integrate a few science fiction stories!
My 1950s unit in the spring semester could be modified with a few science fiction short stories. Considering my ongoing fascination with media landscapes of the future, I want to integrate one story on fears over television and one on nuclear horror (which would fit nicely with a group of assignments I have using song lyrics about atomic panic). Feel free to suggest a story that you would include or wish was included in your own US college course (or advanced high school course). No novels unfortunately. I have access to a range of syllabi and a TON of ideas but I always love to hear your selections.
Before we get to the photograph above and the curated birthdays, let me know what pre-1985 SF you’re currently reading or planning to read!
The Photograph (with links to reviews and brief thoughts)
- Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars (1956) was a childhood favorite of mine. I think it was on the shelf of SF my dad had in his teens. There’s something relentlessly compelling about the conceptual breakthrough premise — i.e. child discovers the true nature of the world.
- Despite the miserable cover to my edition, the Robert Silverberg edited The New Atlantis (1975) is a nearly perfect anthology with three hard hitters by Ursula K. Le Guin, James Tiptree, Jr., and Gene Wolfe. Highly recommended!
- John Christopher’s The Death of Grass (1956). I bounced off this one. I only managed a short review.
- Anders Bodelsen’s Freezing Down (1969, trans. 1971) is a harrowing collision of SF tropes and the emotional landscape of Scandinavian noir. I particularly adored Bodelsen’s use of an increasingly restrictive space in which the characters interact. Highly recommended.
What am I writing about?
I posted an extensive interview with Chukwunonso Ezeiyoke, author of Nigerian Speculative Fiction: The Evolution (2025). His book, the first ever on Nigerian speculative fiction, argues that the forces of canon creation in Nigeria (often with the soft power of the CIA) simultaneously obfuscated awareness of speculative voices and also prevented their popularity.
I will be continuing my interviews with authors of recent SF scholarship for two primary reasons: 1) I read a ton of SF scholarship and would like to share some of it with you 2) While I will not only cover books published recently, I would like to see more academic works received Hugo Award nods for Best Related Work. Jordan S. Carroll, whom I interviewed back in January, received a Hugo nomination for Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024).
Continuing the big project I started this summer: I reviewed the second of 116 issues I plan on cover in my Galaxy Science Fiction magazine read-through. The second issue contained the magazine’s first masterpiece (in my opinion).
Finishing out my productive month, I posted full reviews of two novels: Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979) and George Hay’s Flight of the “Hesper” (1952) (for my generation ship series).
And a rare Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art post as well — The Flowering Bodies of Attilio Uzzo.
What am I reading?
After reading Chukwunonso Ezeiyoke’s Nigerian Speculative Fiction: The Evolution (2025) (above), browsed through the rest of the volumes in the Studies in Global Genre Fiction series out from Routledge Press. Agnieszka Gajewska’s Holocaust and the Stars: The Past in the Prose of Stanisław Lem (2012) jumped out at me. I plan on reading it soon.
I plan on a Galaxy issue this month as well. Beyond that, I’ll keep it under wraps. My fall semester stars tomorrow and all plans will be contingent on early semester exhaustion and stress.
A Curated List of SF Birthdays from the Last Two Weeks [names link to The Internet Speculative Fiction Database for bibliographical info]
July 13th: Monique Wittig (1935-2003). Known for her feminist SF novel Les Guérillères (1969)
July 14th: Christopher Priest (1943-2024). A favorite of mine — if he’s new to you check out the wonderful short stories in An Infinite Summer (1979). And if you want to read a novel instead, Inverted World (1974) ranks amongst my 70s favorites.
- Depouilly’s cover for the 1968 French edition of D. F. Jones’ Colossus (1966)
July 15th: D. F. Jones (1918-1981). I went ahead and put Colossus (1966) on my to acquire list. Adapted as Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970).
July 16th: Sheri S. Tepper (1929-2016).
July 16th: Robert Sheckley (1928-2005).
July 16th: Joseph P. Martino (1931-2022).
July 17th: Italian SF author Vittorio Catani (1940-2020). Other than one late story from 2014, everything he wrote remains untranslated into English.
July 17th: Influential French SF editor and author Michel Demuth (1939-2006). None of his fiction has been translated into English. He edited the French SF magazine Galaxie from 1970-1977.
July 18th: Editor Charles G. Waugh (1943).
- Concept art by Syd Mead for Blade Runner (1982)
July 18th: Syd Mead (1933-2019).
July 18th: Artist Gerry Daly (1957).
July 19th: Richard E. Geis (1927-2013). Influential fan voice (and writer of erotic novels)… loved to rail against hi-brow SF. I don’t think we’d have been on the same critical side of things.
July 19th: SF Critic and scholar Darko Suvin (1934-).
July 20th: M. P. Shiel (1865-1947).
July 21st: Italian and editor Ugo Malaguti (1945-2021). All of his work remains untranslated — alas.
July 22nd: Dean McLaughlin (1931-).
- Bodé’s cover for his graphic novel Sunpot (1971)
July 22nd: Artist Vaughn Bodé (1941-1975).
July 22nd: Eric C. Williams (1918-2010).
July 23rd: Katharine Burdekin (1896-1963). Known for Swastika Night (1937), which I acquired a few years back but have not read.
- Finlay’s interior art for Raymond F. Jones’ “The Memory of Mars” in Amazing Stories, ed. Cele Goldsmith (December 1961)
July 23rd: Virgil Finlay (1914-1971). The master of interior art line work — love his stuff.
July 23rd: Editor and author Gardner Dozois (1947-2018). I can’t shake the horror of “Horse of Air” (1970).
July 23rd: Artist Eric Ladd (1949-).
July 24th: John D. MacDonald (1916-1986). New to his SF? Check out “Flaw” (1949) and “Spectator Sport” (1950).
July 24th: Barry N. Malzberg (1939-2024). A favorite of mine… For a sense of his fiction, check out my reviews of Revelations (1972) and The Gamesman (1975).
July 24th: Gordon Eklund (1945-).
- Tom Barber’s cover for Amazing Stories (March 1976)
July 24th: Artist Tom Barber (1946-).
July 25th: Evelyn E. Smith (1922-2000). Still haven’t read any of her short fiction.
July 25th: Kendell Foster Crossen (1910-1981).
July 25th: Author and scholar Brian Stableford (1948-2024). His research on early French SF is indispensable. Less a fan of his functionalist adventure-oriented science fiction, so far…
July 26th: Aldous Huxley (1894-1963).
July 26th: M. John Harrison (1945-). If you’re new to his fiction, check out my reviews of The Committed Men (1971) and The Pastel City (1971). He’s another favorite of mine.
July 27th: Artist Mel Hunter (1927-2004).
July 27th: Sydney J. Van Scyoc (1939-2023). I featured her first three published short fictions for my series on female authors I should know more about: “Shatter the Wall” (1962), “Bimmie Says” (1962), and “Pollony Undiverted” (1963). The final of the three was particularly interesting.
- Adamov’s cover for the 1982 French edition of Vladimir Colin’s Babel (1978)
July 27th: French SF artist Philippe Adamov (1956-2020).
For book reviews consult the INDEX
For cover art posts consult the INDEX
For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX
#1950s #1960s #1970s #AndersBodelsen #ArthurCClarke #avantGarde #bookReviews #books #fantasy #fiction #GeneWolfe #JamesTiptreeJr #JohnChristopher #paperbacks #sciFi #scienceFiction #writing
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What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XXIV
- A selection of read volumes from my shelves
What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read next month? Here’s the June installment of this column.
I adore teaching American History for college credit. Every summer I ponder what to change and improve. And this year, I want to integrate a few science fiction stories!
My 1950s unit in the spring semester could be modified with a few science fiction short stories. Considering my ongoing fascination with media landscapes of the future, I want to integrate one story on fears over television and one on nuclear horror (which would fit nicely with a group of assignments I have using song lyrics about atomic panic). Feel free to suggest a story that you would include or wish was included in your own US college course (or advanced high school course). No novels unfortunately. I have access to a range of syllabi and a TON of ideas but I always love to hear your selections.
Before we get to the photograph above and the curated birthdays, let me know what pre-1985 SF you’re currently reading or planning to read!
The Photograph (with links to reviews and brief thoughts)
- Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars (1956) was a childhood favorite of mine. I think it was on the shelf of SF my dad had in his teens. There’s something relentlessly compelling about the conceptual breakthrough premise — i.e. child discovers the true nature of the world.
- Despite the miserable cover to my edition, the Robert Silverberg edited The New Atlantis (1975) is a nearly perfect anthology with three hard hitters by Ursula K. Le Guin, James Tiptree, Jr., and Gene Wolfe. Highly recommended!
- John Christopher’s The Death of Grass (1956). I bounced off this one. I only managed a short review.
- Anders Bodelsen’s Freezing Down (1969, trans. 1971) is a harrowing collision of SF tropes and the emotional landscape of Scandinavian noir. I particularly adored Bodelsen’s use of an increasingly restrictive space in which the characters interact. Highly recommended.
What am I writing about?
I posted an extensive interview with Chukwunonso Ezeiyoke, author of Nigerian Speculative Fiction: The Evolution (2025). His book, the first ever on Nigerian speculative fiction, argues that the forces of canon creation in Nigeria (often with the soft power of the CIA) simultaneously obfuscated awareness of speculative voices and also prevented their popularity.
I will be continuing my interviews with authors of recent SF scholarship for two primary reasons: 1) I read a ton of SF scholarship and would like to share some of it with you 2) While I will not only cover books published recently, I would like to see more academic works received Hugo Award nods for Best Related Work. Jordan S. Carroll, whom I interviewed back in January, received a Hugo nomination for Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024).
Continuing the big project I started this summer: I reviewed the second of 116 issues I plan on cover in my Galaxy Science Fiction magazine read-through. The second issue contained the magazine’s first masterpiece (in my opinion).
Finishing out my productive month, I posted full reviews of two novels: Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979) and George Hay’s Flight of the “Hesper” (1952) (for my generation ship series).
And a rare Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art post as well — The Flowering Bodies of Attilio Uzzo.
What am I reading?
After reading Chukwunonso Ezeiyoke’s Nigerian Speculative Fiction: The Evolution (2025) (above), browsed through the rest of the volumes in the Studies in Global Genre Fiction series out from Routledge Press. Agnieszka Gajewska’s Holocaust and the Stars: The Past in the Prose of Stanisław Lem (2012) jumped out at me. I plan on reading it soon.
I plan on a Galaxy issue this month as well. Beyond that, I’ll keep it under wraps. My fall semester stars tomorrow and all plans will be contingent on early semester exhaustion and stress.
A Curated List of SF Birthdays from the Last Two Weeks [names link to The Internet Speculative Fiction Database for bibliographical info]
July 13th: Monique Wittig (1935-2003). Known for her feminist SF novel Les Guérillères (1969)
July 14th: Christopher Priest (1943-2024). A favorite of mine — if he’s new to you check out the wonderful short stories in An Infinite Summer (1979). And if you want to read a novel instead, Inverted World (1974) ranks amongst my 70s favorites.
- Depouilly’s cover for the 1968 French edition of D. F. Jones’ Colossus (1966)
July 15th: D. F. Jones (1918-1981). I went ahead and put Colossus (1966) on my to acquire list. Adapted as Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970).
July 16th: Sheri S. Tepper (1929-2016).
July 16th: Robert Sheckley (1928-2005).
July 16th: Joseph P. Martino (1931-2022).
July 17th: Italian SF author Vittorio Catani (1940-2020). Other than one late story from 2014, everything he wrote remains untranslated into English.
July 17th: Influential French SF editor and author Michel Demuth (1939-2006). None of his fiction has been translated into English. He edited the French SF magazine Galaxie from 1970-1977.
July 18th: Editor Charles G. Waugh (1943).
- Concept art by Syd Mead for Blade Runner (1982)
July 18th: Syd Mead (1933-2019).
July 18th: Artist Gerry Daly (1957).
July 19th: Richard E. Geis (1927-2013). Influential fan voice (and writer of erotic novels)… loved to rail against hi-brow SF. I don’t think we’d have been on the same critical side of things.
July 19th: SF Critic and scholar Darko Suvin (1934-).
July 20th: M. P. Shiel (1865-1947).
July 21st: Italian and editor Ugo Malaguti (1945-2021). All of his work remains untranslated — alas.
July 22nd: Dean McLaughlin (1931-).
- Bodé’s cover for his graphic novel Sunpot (1971)
July 22nd: Artist Vaughn Bodé (1941-1975).
July 22nd: Eric C. Williams (1918-2010).
July 23rd: Katharine Burdekin (1896-1963). Known for Swastika Night (1937), which I acquired a few years back but have not read.
- Finlay’s interior art for Raymond F. Jones’ “The Memory of Mars” in Amazing Stories, ed. Cele Goldsmith (December 1961)
July 23rd: Virgil Finlay (1914-1971). The master of interior art line work — love his stuff.
July 23rd: Editor and author Gardner Dozois (1947-2018). I can’t shake the horror of “Horse of Air” (1970).
July 23rd: Artist Eric Ladd (1949-).
July 24th: John D. MacDonald (1916-1986). New to his SF? Check out “Flaw” (1949) and “Spectator Sport” (1950).
July 24th: Barry N. Malzberg (1939-2024). A favorite of mine… For a sense of his fiction, check out my reviews of Revelations (1972) and The Gamesman (1975).
July 24th: Gordon Eklund (1945-).
- Tom Barber’s cover for Amazing Stories (March 1976)
July 24th: Artist Tom Barber (1946-).
July 25th: Evelyn E. Smith (1922-2000). Still haven’t read any of her short fiction.
July 25th: Kendell Foster Crossen (1910-1981).
July 25th: Author and scholar Brian Stableford (1948-2024). His research on early French SF is indispensable. Less a fan of his functionalist adventure-oriented science fiction, so far…
July 26th: Aldous Huxley (1894-1963).
July 26th: M. John Harrison (1945-). If you’re new to his fiction, check out my reviews of The Committed Men (1971) and The Pastel City (1971). He’s another favorite of mine.
July 27th: Artist Mel Hunter (1927-2004).
July 27th: Sydney J. Van Scyoc (1939-2023). I featured her first three published short fictions for my series on female authors I should know more about: “Shatter the Wall” (1962), “Bimmie Says” (1962), and “Pollony Undiverted” (1963). The final of the three was particularly interesting.
- Adamov’s cover for the 1982 French edition of Vladimir Colin’s Babel (1978)
July 27th: French SF artist Philippe Adamov (1956-2020).
For book reviews consult the INDEX
For cover art posts consult the INDEX
For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX
#1950s #1960s #1970s #AndersBodelsen #ArthurCClarke #avantGarde #bookReviews #books #fantasy #fiction #GeneWolfe #JamesTiptreeJr #JohnChristopher #paperbacks #sciFi #scienceFiction #writing
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Book Review: Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3, ed. Frederik Pohl (1955)
- Richard Powers’ cover for the 1955 edition
3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)
Ballantine Books’ illustrious science fictional program started with a bang–Star Science Fiction Stories. According to Mike Ashley’s Transformations: The Story of Science-Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970 Frederik Pohl’s anthology series of original (mostly) stories was “intended as both a showcase of Ballantine’s authors and a lure to new writers.” Paying better rates than magazines, the Star series foreshadowed the explosion of original anthologies that would provide a sustained challenge to the eminence held in the 50s by the magazine.
I’ve selected the third volume of the six-volume series.1 It contains an illustrative cross-section of 50s science fiction. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), and Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955) are not to be missed.
Recommended.
Brief Plot Summaries/Analysis
“It’s Such a Beautiful Day” (1955), Isaac Asimov, 3.5/5 (Good): The anthology starts off with an effective Isaac Asimov satire of the suburban experience. The creation of suburbia in the 1950s (and subsequent mass white flight) generated increased commutes between home and urban work. The home became a bunker to protect the American family from any threat (fallout shelters, a community away from diversity and interaction with “the other,” etc.).2
Asimov speculates that new, almost instantaneous, transportation portals will isolate the family completely from the external world. A minor glitch in the transportation system instills a change in the young Richard Hanshaw, Jr. He isn’t as willing to trust the portal — and decides to trek to school by foot. His teacher calls mother in shock and suggests psychological treatment. An intriguing, and gentle, satire on American conceptions of normalcy, the new-fangled post-War emergence of psychology as a therapeutic practice, and the suburban experience.3
“The Strawberry Window” (1955), Ray Bradbury, 3/5 (Average): The story follows a family on Mars. The father, Will, spends his day constructing the settlement town. He’s possessed by the dream of Mars and humanity’s conquest of the stars: “It’s not just us come to Mars, it’s the race, the whole darn human race, depending on how we make out in our lifetime. This thing is so big I want to laugh, I’m so scared stiff of it” (31). His long-suffering wife Carrie yearns for the small sounds and big memories that anchor her to Earth. And so Will comes up with a compromise, an expensive compromise.
Ultimately, this is beautiful polish to a banal, almost jingoistic, defense of humanity’s supposed destiny to expand and conquer: “There’s nothing better than Man with a capital M in my book” (32). I am far more interested in the more subversive and quietly critical moments of Bradbury’s other Mars stories. This one is simplistic propaganda of conquest. Despite the enjoyable thematic core (the effects of leaving Earth) and polished telling, I’d classify “The Strawberry Window” amongst his most disappointing and forced. For superior Bradbury that I’ve covered, check out “The Highway” (1950) and “The Pedestrian” (1951).
“The Deep Range” (1955), Arthur C. Clarke, 3/5 (Average): One of the reasons I feel a special attraction to 50s SF is its interest in the working-class experience of the future. Of course, for the reader of the present futuristic trappings suggest a certain glorification of what would be a new form of the mundane daily grind. The heroic blue-collar stories in James Gunn’s fix-up Station in Space (1958) come to mind. In Clarke’s “The Deep Range” humanity farms the seas. Instead of terrestrial herds of sheep or cows, shepherds in submersibles with dolphin assistants protect herds of meat-yielding whales from predatory sharks.
An effective slice-of-working class experience set in an evocative locale. It’s an immersive little story that draws on Clarke’s own interest in scuba diving and underwater adventure. Regardless, I remain uninterested in returning to Clarke’s work in anything more than an anthologized tale here and there.
“Alien” (1955), Lester del Rey, 3/5 (Average): Due to an comically improbable collision at sea, Larry Cross and his alcoholic crewmate Al Simmonds find themselves stranded on an island with an alien which “could swim out of a sunken ship at the bottom of the sea” (51). Al Simmonds is injured and Cross must keep the man alive and figure out the alien’s intentions. A classic SF problem story in which man must figure out a modus operandi in a bizarre new scenario. It’s polished. It’s solid. It’s predictable.
“Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Philip K. Dick, 5/5 (Masterpiece): Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.4 His walk home is nightmarish. Mechanical newspaper machines shout excitedly about “war, death, amazing new weapons” (67). The public shelter beckons with its neon lights but he has no money in his pocket for entry. And the store with the new shelter model mocks with its advertisements: “a powered heating and refrigeration system” and “self-servicing air-purification network” with “three decontamination stages for food and water” (68). Reluctant to yet again confront his father about their lack of shelter, he gazes at the new model and talks to the salesmen. He imagines that every evening he’d sleep in its encapsulating embrace, womb-like.
One of the absolute best fallout shelter themed SF stories I’ve ever read. It’s a fascinating collision of crisp prose, commentary on the arms race, and an evisceration of the complicity of commercialism in Cold War terror. Joins William Tenn’s “Generation of Noah” (1951), Daniel Galouye’s Dark Universe (1961), Modecai Roshwald’s Level 7 (1959), and Fritz Leiber’s “The Moon Is Green” (1952) amongst the best on the theme.
“Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), Gerald Kersh, 3.5/5 (Good): In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries surgical diagrams called “Wound Men” crop up in medical miscellanies in Europe. These illustrations–the human form hacked, slashed, smashed, cut, pierced, bloated–served as an annotated table of contents to guide the reader through various injuries and diseases. Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.
The reader becomes immersed in a historical military narrative that begins in the early 16th century. There’s a bizarre sense of horror and fantastical displacement. Like some crushed and deformed specimen, Cuckoo becomes an encyclopedic, and culminative, glimpse of humanity’s relentless obsession with death and violence.
Interesting and memorable. I’ll keep on the lookout for more of Kersh’s SFF.
“Dance of the Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson, 4/5 (Good): My third favorite story in the anthology transplants the standard narrative of a young adult straying from the path set out by parents and small town community onto a break-neck road trip in a drug and alcohol drenched near-future. Len, Bud, Barbara, and Peggy race their car towards St. Louis. Bud tries to get Barb to take snuggle–“act of promiscuous love-play; usage evolved during W.W. III” (114)–and take drugs: “Have a jab, Bab” (115). In the kaleidoscope of the new and relentless peer pressure the lessons her mother taught her slowly erode. All her inhibitions come crashing down when the quartet see the transcendent nightmare that is the titular dance of the dead.
Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust: “At a hundred miles an hour let me DREAM my DREAMS!” (115). It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.
“Any More at Home Like You?” (1955), Chad Oliver, 2.75/5 (Below Average): Dangerously close to joke story territory (what I classify stories that rely on a silly last page twist designed to generate a chuckle), Oliver re-imagines the classic flying saucer story. A young “man” named Keith crashes his advanced spacecraft in the swanky Bel-Air neighborhood of LA. He seems friendly. Friendly residents take him in. He meets with politicians. He gives a canned speech at the UN. But what’s the secret behind his sudden appearance? Does he really represent a massive Galactic Civilization as he claims? When the pieces all fit together, there’s a gentle sense to it all mixed in with a little, rather silly, “snip” at humanity’s claims to galactic centrality.
If you’re new to Oliver, I recommend tracking downs his two generation ship short stories–“Stardust” (1952) and “The Wind Blows Free” (1957). This one was not for me.
“The Devil on Salvation Bluff” (1955), Jack Vance, 3.25/5 (Above Average): As my last Vance review came in 2021–The Languages of Pao (1958), I looked forward to this anthology as a way to return to his fiction. “The Devil on Salvation Bluff” imagines a religious colony (everyone calls each other “Brother” or “Sister”) on a planet named Glory without clear scientific or societal patterns. If anything, disorder, irregularity, and chaos is the pattern. Regardless, the community attempts to impose an almost monastic order on their lives. The colonists brings with them a massive clock, build communities in precise patterns, and carve up the landscape with linear canals and irrigation.
In classic missionary fashion, the colonists attempt to impose their religion and regularity on the humanoid inhabitants of Glory, nicknamed Flits, that spend their days indulging in their passions, seemingly random rituals, and goat herding. Using salt as a bribe, they momentarily convince the Flits to settle in a new village created by the colonists. After Brother Raymond and Sister Mary kidnap the chief of the Flits to identify the psychosis they think might underline their impulsive, random, and occasionally destructive actions, the true psychological truth of the planet emerges. Vance suggests that dogmatic religion must shift and change to adapt to the moment.
Fits in with an intriguing cluster of often brilliant 50s stories exploring the clash of Earth religion and the SFnal new–Ray Bradbury’s “The Man” (1949), Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star” (1955), James Blish’s A Case of Conscience (novella 1953, novelized 1958), Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (stories 1955-1957, novelized 1959), etc.
Somewhat recommended.
“Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), Jack Williamson, 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls (169). “You like me, huh?” she asks strangers as they pass (170). “Won’t you by me?” she cajoles (170). The implication is clear. The reason for her sudden appearance in train stations, and others of her model, far less so. Chimberley represents General Cybernetics, a company building “managerial computers” to replace human workers (171). Chimberley attempts the origins of “THE VITAL APPLIANCE!” with her all too human sex appeal, and disturbing tendency to spout advertisements for other products (170). He, little more than a cypher manifesting the displacement of the mechanical age, feels drawn to her as “his best friends were digital computers” (171). He discerns that she is a recent product created, produced, and distributed by one of these vast managerial computers. Giddy with excitement he sees her as “something human management would never have had the brains or the vision to accomplish” (172). He purchases her from the vending machine and sets off to find the producing facility. But a line has been crossed, and another.
This story bothered me (in a good way) far more than it should. Williamson integrates little comments about how the mechanical (think AI unleashed on the US government) ignores the human experience. And how Chimberley, alone, adrift, insular, feels fulfilled by a programmed device that is but a fragment of a capitalistic assault on the consumer. This disturbed satirical gem took me by surprise. I will be on the lookout for more 50s Williamson short stories.
Notes
- Eight if we count the one-volume Star Science Fiction Magazine (1958) and Star Short Novels (1954). ↩︎
- There is a ton of scholarship on both of these ideas that I have referenced in various reviews in the past. Here is a short list! Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1988, rev. 2017); Thomas Bishop’s Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter (2020); Laura McEnaney’s Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (2000); and Robert A. Beauregard’s When America Became Suburban (2006). ↩︎
- For “normalcy” see Anna G. Creadick’s Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America (2010); For the growth of psychology as medical practice in the post-War moment see Ellen Herman’s The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (1995). ↩︎
- I am reminded of studies of childhood trauma conducted on the students of Abo Elementary, New Mexico, a school built underground as a fallout shelter. ↩︎
For cover art posts consult the INDEX
For book reviews consult the INDEX
For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX
#1950s #arthurCClarke #avantGarde #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #chadOliver #fiction #frederikPohl #geraldKesh #isaacAsimov #jackVance #jackWilliamson #lesterDelRey #philipKDick #rayBradbury #richardMatheson #sciFi #scienceFiction #writing
